20 August 2008
Russian Provocations Contributed to Georgia Crisis
U.S. envoy urges Russian forces to protect Georgia civilians’ rights
Washington -- Russia’s attack on Georgia followed several months of provocative acts engineered in Moscow to destabilize the emerging South Caucasus democracy, says a top American envoy to the region.
In an August 19 press briefing, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matt Bryza said that U.S. officials repeatedly advised that direct military conflict was unwinnable, and worked behind the scenes with all sides in an effort to cool simmering tensions in the region. “The provocations have been going on for a long time,” Bryza said. “Russia was involved in this from the very outset.”
Bryza recently returned from Tbilisi, Georgia, where he acted as a U.S. special envoy to help support the Georgian government as it faced Russia’s August 8 military incursion.
Since the late 1990s, Bryza has been a leading figure in international diplomatic efforts to help resolve several “frozen conflicts” in the South Caucasus, including Georgia’s breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions, as well as the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute between neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The latest crisis, Bryza said, can be traced to the Kremlin’s April 2008 decision to strengthen its relations with Georgia’s separatist regions, extending Russian citizenship to residents of South Ossetia and Abkhazia -- both internationally recognized as part of Georgia.
“That’s in sharp violation of numerous [U.N.] Security Council resolutions … that underscore Georgia's territorial integrity,” said Bryza.
Moscow also began building up Russian forces operating as “peacekeepers” that would play a subsequent role in the August attack, Bryza said, violating Georgian airspace with Russian warplanes and shooting down Georgian unmanned surveillance aircraft operating in Georgian territory.
Russian officials also hold key leadership and military positions in South Ossetia’s self-declared government, Bryza said, and commanded the South Ossetian forces that launched repeated attacks from behind a “shield” of Russian peacekeeping forces in the weeks leading up to the conflict.
“Whoever shot whom first is now no longer the issue at all,” Bryza said. “Russia has escalated so dramatically and brutally and in a way that has brought the opprobrium of the international community against it.”
Bryza rejected the idea that Georgia received a “green light” from Washington.
“Russia is 30 times as big as Georgia. Its military is several times as large. It can almost instantaneously roll tanks in. And then even if you succeed miraculously in stopping the tanks and the infantry and mechanized infantry, which move very quickly, it's the airpower that's finally going to get you. And that is what happened,” Bryza said.
Bryza also dismissed claims from senior Russian officials that Georgia committed genocide in South Ossetia as “false and ridiculous,” citing recent reporting from the independent nongovernmental group Human Rights Watch, which has confirmed fewer than 100 deaths in South Ossetia -- far fewer than the 2,000 cited repeatedly by Russian authorities and its state-owned media outlets.
In contrast, Bryza said, he received several reports of “irregular forces” attacking civilians, looting and burning communities in Russian-held territory -- abuses that since have been confirmed by Human Rights Watch and journalists traveling in the conflict zone.
“I'd just like to underscore that as peacekeepers, as human beings, members of the Russian military are responsible for making sure that the territory that they now occupy is free from these ravages against the local population,” Bryza said.
Russia must honor its cease-fire commitments and withdraw its forces immediately, Bryza said. “Russian forces moved very quickly into Georgia, and they should be able to move equally quickly out of Georgia.”
“This military operation has imposed a serious cost on Russia, in terms of its standing in the world,” Bryza said. “It's not something we want to see happen.”
